What Makes Hacking SEXY?
Hacking is synonymous to acts of greed, manipulation and destruction. The unprecedented amount of cyber-crime crippling the network systems of governments and corporations alike, heavily impacts millions of internet users throughout the globe.
Who are hackers?
First let’s establish who are hackers:
Any individual who possess enough technical skills to gain unauthorized access to systems or networks in order to commit crimes. The term is commonly applied to a person who uses their abilities for illegal or unethical purposes.
A guy who randomly breaks into your network with no permission, presents you a list of vulnerabilities in your system and claim to have done you a favor — are grey hat hackers. Some hackers identify as activist, claiming to have a duty to point out poor security practices and are rebellious about how technology should work. Then there is the worst kind, black hat hacker — plainly steals your data for malicious intent or spreads malware, vandalizes systems, engage in illegal activity such as identity theft and DDoS attacks.
The term hacker was used in the 60s to describe a programmer who could increase efficiency of computer codes in a manner which removed or “hacked”, excess machine-code instructions from a program, all in an era of highly constrained computer capabilities. Over the years the term has evolved to refer to a person with an advanced understanding of computers, networking, programming or hardware, mostly with malicious intent.
Ethical Hacking
If it’s all that bad, could hacking ever be ethical?
This is where the white hat hackers come in! This group strives to operate in the public’s best interest. Most white hat hackers are hired to attempt to break into the company’s networks in order to find and report on security vulnerabilities. Hence security issues are mitigated before criminal hackers get the chance to exploit them. They are trained in order to learn and perform hacking in the most professional manner. Overall risks and vulnerabilities of a system is then highlighted. Ethical hackers provide solutions to loopholes and ensure the safety of the network is sustained in the future.
Being in the dawn of international conflicts, organizations from all across the globe struggle to protect systems from falling victim to hackers. Only 38% of global organizations claim that they are prepared for a cyber attack. With new worms, malware, viruses and ransomware multiplying every day, it creates a need for ethical hacking services to safeguard networks of not only businesses, but government agencies and military defenses alike.
Red Teaming:
So what exactly makes hacking sexy?
A little bit of red makes anything sexy. That little bit of red in hacking refers to Red Teaming.
Putting red teaming in layman’s terms, it’s basically ethical hacking represented by a group of security experts. This team is focused on a particular target, preying on internal vulnerabilities by using physical and electronic social engineering approaches. Plainly just attempting to exploit physical weaknesses to gain access to the premises. Red teaming might sound something like penetration testing, however, both are varied, with penTest being just a stimulation and red team a real world assessment.
A day in the life of a Red Teamer
So what do Red Teams actually do?
A Red Team assessment begins with collecting a much information as possible about the target, regarding the people, technology and environment. This serves as a method to both build and acquire the right tools for engagement purposes. For instance, crafting malicious file payloads, prepping RFID cloners, configuring hardware trojan, or creating falsified personas.
Next is execution. Red teamers would conduct face-to-face social engineering or planting hardware trojans and seeking chances for exploitation. This is followed by exploiting those weaknesses through compromise servers/apps/networks or to bypass physical controls. Red teamers establish a beachhead by taking advantage if this exploitation step. Using compromised servers or malicious file payload installation, or using physical key impressions and lock picked doors, the operation seeks to gain command and control.
Once a remote access to exploit these systems are stable, then the breaching of critically sensitive data, information or physical assets are conducted. Hence, the organization would be able to gain necessary insight from the reports given by the security experts in order to fix, patch and remediate what is necessary to ensure the same loopholes cease to exist in the future.
Coming back to our initial assertion, hacking (ethically) is sexy!
White Hat Hackers or Ethical Hackers are let loose into the most precious pieces of information assets of an organization. The trust earned is solely based on reputation of the Information Security company / consultants. Ethical Hackers are warriors who defend the cyberspace from cybercriminals and fight through the wires to save the victims of cyber attacks and bring those systems and networks back to life. They are the heroes who save nations and organisations which support the economy from DDoS attacks and other virus and malware attacks which cripple governments and organisations.
It has now come to a point where it’s no longer about whether you will get hacked, it’s about when. Consequently, businesses and organisations cannot survive without Information Security which entails Ethical Hackers. Ethical Hackers can be like psychics too. They have the capability to know who you are, what you do and where you go, just by gaining access to your digital life. Their capability to manoeuvre information through the wires and sustain the character to uphold the trust of those who depend on them, is how SEXY is defined in the cyber world.
